My Town

5. The Hunt Begins

Life goes on. It was a fact that Romero was more than familiar with, and he saw it again two days after Miss Watson's body had been found. It was a typical Wednesday on Main Street; shops were open, men and women were going about their errands, the kids were absent, already in school, and the dreary grey cloud was beginning to lift.

He pulled up outside Rita's Diner and turned off the engine. A few people glanced at him as he stepped out of his car, but nobody stopped to speak. He didn't mind. His Wednesday morning ritual had been the same for as long as he could remember, a constant he could cling to when everything else changed. People came and people went, trees were cut down and even the shape of the coast changed year by year as the waves carved into the cliffs, but Wednesday mornings were his, and nobody would take them away from him.

The bell above the door tinkled as he entered the diner. Again, the few people present looked up, most of them cap-wearing men who worked at the single tiny lumber yard, but nobody called out for his attention; they turned their focus back to their breakfasts, or their own conversations.

He took his usual seat at the bar. A flier was waiting for him on the counter. White Pine Bay Bi-Weekly, said the title, in large white letters. The town's equivalent of a newspaper. As the smell of roasting coffee assaulted his sense of smell, he picked up the flier and scanned it, until at last he found the article he was looking for.

Much-loved Teacher Found Dead At Home, the headline read. In the late hours of Monday night, local high-school teacher Miss Beverley Watson was found dead in her home on Fairweather Avenue by members of the family. Investigations into her apparent murder are ongoing, though police have yet to release a statement. The school where Miss Watson worked for several years have announced a day of remembrance, and donations are being accepted to raise funds to establish a memorial for the woman who touched so many lives.

"Here you go," said a warm voice from across the counter. A cup of steaming coffee was placed in front of him. "Coffee, one sugar, and just a dash of cream. And for breakfast, two slices of toast with a fried egg sunny-side up, two hash browns and a rasher of smoked bacon." Rita beamed a smile at him as she deposited the plate and clean cutlery wrapped in a napkin. "Though I swear, I'm gonna get you to try my home-grown oats one of these days. My porridge has put hairs on the chest of most of the men in this town."

"And yet you serve me the same thing every Wednesday," he pointed out.

She winked at him. "I know what you like."

Picking up the cutlery, he spread the napkin across his lap and slid the flier over to her. "Hot off the press?"

"My Jim's out delivering the last batch as we speak." She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and hesitated momentarily before speaking. "I hope it meets with your approval."

He waved his fork dismissively before spearing one of the hash browns. "It's fine."

"Good, good." Reassured, she stood up a little straighter and brushed an invisible spot from her clean white apron. "Say, I think I have a sausage left on the grill at the back. Why don't I get it for you?"

"I have enough already," he objected, but she rode roughshod over him.

"Oh, don't be silly! It's only going to go to waste. And besides, you're looking a bit tired. You look like you could use an extra meal. Busy man like you needs to keep his strength up, especially if you're to catch the fiend who killed poor Miss Watson."

Romero didn't bother with any further objections. Rita wasn't quite old enough to be his mother, but certainly a doting aunt. In truth, he owed her his life. After the mafia-style execution of his wife and son, Rita had taken him in and bullied him into staying healthy and sane enough to not only exact revenge, but ensure White Pine Bay was cleansed of the murderous scum forever. Had it not been for Rita, and her husband Jim who now ran the local print, he would have run off half-cocked and gotten himself killed in his fury to find his family's killers. White Pine Bay owed Rita more than it knew.

"Here we are," she said, dropping a still-sizzling sausage onto his plate with a pair of tongues.

"Thanks." He picked up his cup and, under the guise of sipping his coffee, lowered his voice so that nobody else in the diner could hear him speak. "What's happening in my town?"

She took a deep breath, and he could practically see her ordering her thoughts, trying to decide which piece of gossip needed telling first. Rita was the biggest gossip in White Pine Bay and beyond, but at least she was loyal. It was a trait which, Romero found, was sorely lacking in most people.

"Well," she said, leaning down on the counter and resting her elbows on the hard surface, "you know the Meechans, right?" He nodded, his mouth too full of toast to speak. "And you know how their youngest, Molly, went and got herself pregnant? And how Mr and Mrs Meechan sent her away, to stay with that aunt in Colorado?" Another nod. "I heard that Molly's had the child—a boy—and that he's been given over for adoption. Apparently, Molly's due back next week, so she can finish her education under the watchful eye of her folks. Of course, she'll have to repeat a year, but the Meechans are hoping she'll eventually get a place in college. She was a bright girl."

"Anything else?" The news about the girl was worth knowing, but not particularly relevant. Hutchins would make sure she settled back in.

"I did see that Bates woman's boy—the eldest one, with the pretty face?—driving some woman around yesterday. At first I thought she might be his squeeze, but Remo was in late yesterday, and he said she's some sort of scholar, staying up at the motel. And she's from England, too. Not sure what she's doing here of all places, but I thought it was a bit odd."

"I'll keep my eye on it," he assured her.

She merely cocked an eyebrow, failing to completely suppress a sardonic smile. "I'm sure you're not the only man in White Pine Bay who'll be doing just that."

"Is that all the gossip you have?" he asked, pointedly ignoring her last statement, and associated implications.

"News, darlin'. I purvey news. Not gossip."

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, he thought to himself. But was he said was, "Of course. My apologies. And compliments to the chef for out-doing herself yet again with breakfast."

"It's on the house," she told him as he reached for his wallet.

"Please don't make me feel bad for robbing you of your livelihood," he replied. Yet another Wednesday ritual.

She didn't accept his money, so he left it on the counter, where nobody would touch it until Jim got back and put it in the till, tutting and shaking his head at his wife's nonsense.

"Just so you know," Rita said, "the girls and I are doing the catering for Miss Watson's funeral on Friday." Romero nodded. Rita and Jim had no children of their own. The 'girls' in this case were the five other women who worked shifts with Rita at the diner. "And we've started a collection jar, to contribute towards the school memorial." She tapped an empty jam jar sitting on the counter meaningfully.

Romero took out a ten dollar bill, adding it to the others in the glass container.

"See you next week, Rita," he said.

"Alex," she called, as he reached the door. He turned back, and she gave him one of her concerned looks. "I meant what I said, about you looking tired. Would it kill you, to take a day off?"

"It wouldn't kill me," he replied. "But somebody else? Yeah, maybe."

He left before she could accuse him of being paranoid or self-important. The truth was, he hadn't had a vacation in over twenty years, mostly because he was afraid of what would happen if he left the town to its own affairs for more than five minutes, but partially because he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody to do it with. His own parents were dead by more than a decade, and his wife and son were resting eternally in White Pine Bay's cemetery. Sure, there were people in town, people like Fitzpatrick and Hutchins, with whom he could spend a day fishing, but that was as far as their friendships could ever go.

Driving to the office, he let the chatter on the radio wash over his mind, listening to what was going on but not really paying attention to it. For the most part, it seemed like business as usual. There'd been a minor collision at the corner of Avalon Way and Park Avenue; nobody was hurt. An elderly resident had reported a lost dog; black lab with a red collar. And over on South Street there was a brawl in progress between two rival shop owners. Nothing the patrol officers couldn't handle between themselves.

He parked his car in the pool at the back of the station, and entered the Sheriff's Office via the back door. The hallways were quiet, and he met nobody until he stepped into the reception. Moore was at his desk, doing Deputy-related paperwork, and Regina, who'd managed to score the early shift this week, swivelled on her chair to smile at Romero as he entered the communal area.

"Good morning, sir," she said, smiling happily. She always smiled happily, even when she was upset. Regina was the best fake-smiler he had ever met.

"Morning Regina," he replied. "What's new?"

"You have two messages already, Sheriff."

"They're not from Norma Bates, are they?" he asked. But his wry humour went over Regina's head.

"No. The coroner called for you first thing, and then a Mrs. Hawthorn rang about ten minutes ago. I've taken her number. It's on your desk."

"Thank you, Regina."

On the way to his office he collected a hot cup of coffee from the machine in the staff room, and briefly wondered whether his increasingly excessive consumption of the stuff might be what was stopping him sleeping properly. Replacing the station's regular coffee with decaf wouldn't be too difficult; he'd get Regina to do it on the sly, and if anybody picked up on the difference in taste, he'd just tell them that they'd switched suppliers.

In the familiar confines of his office, he booted up his computer and pulled out the physical file he'd opened for the Watson case. So far, it wasn't a very thick file. Steve, the force's crime scene photographer, had captured and printed a few shots of the body, as well as the blood spatter on the walls, but as far as hard evidence went, there was very little.

Miss Watson's large, open eyes stared at him from one of the photographs, a look of serenity on her face, as if she had finally found long-sought peace. Even her curls lay perfectly beneath her, seemingly arranged to give the illusion of perfection. Reaching out, Romero ran one fingertip down the curve of her bare shoulder and across to her neck, where her throat had been slashed. He was missing something. He knew it in his gut. He was missing something important. But he didn't know what.

He put the photograph aside and dialled Fitzpatrick's office at the Scotswood morgue.

"Fitzpatrick," the coroner answered, after four rings.

"Tom, it's Alex Romero."

"Ah, Alex, glad you called. You just caught me. Have a lecture starting in five minutes. The pathology of necrotising fasciitis. Fascinating stuff."

Romero pushed his suddenly unappealing cup of coffee away and cleared his throat. "You've got news about the Watson murder?"

"More a lack of news, really. The autopsy turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Victim died from blood loss, as I first suspected, and there are no signs of intoxicants in her body. In a way, she was lucky."

"And what way might that be?"

"Death occurred in less than a minute. She didn't suffer."

"I doubt that fact will do little to console the family."

"Maybe not. But we have to look for the silver lining, no matter how dull it may appear." Fitzpatrick sighed, and Romero could picture him in his office, shaking his head over the madness of life. "We've analysed the blood we found on the tissue. I've emailed you the results. I hope you can find something to match it to, because that's all I can give you. I'm sorry it's not more."

"So am I," Romero replied. But being sorry didn't change anything. Beverley Watson was still dead, and her killer was still out there, free to strike again. "You've been doing this for a long time, Tom. What do you make of it all?"

"Strange business," Fitzpatrick said without hesitation. "What sort of a man kills a woman in her underwear, but doesn't assault her? I just can't see a motive for it, and I'm not sure I want to. I hate to say it Alex, but maybe this is something beyond the norm. Perhaps what we're dealing with is a truly disturbed individual, somebody who kills not for physical gratification but because he enjoys the feeling of power that it gives him, holding a person's life literally in his hands."

"I'm not ready to go there. Not yet," Romero said, pulling his mind away from the dark places Fitzpatrick led him. He firmly believes that there was always a solid motive—always—no matter how deeply buried.

"Well, I'd love to stay and ruminate on the intricacies of human nature with you, but I have a group of students eager to learn about flesh-eating bacteria. I have a wonderful slide show prepared. Charlie Wiggan is sending a couple of his boys to take Beverley Watson's body to the funeral home, so they can prep her for her big show on Friday. You'll be at the service, I take it?"

"Yes."

"We can talk more then. Good luck, Alex. And take care of yourself."

"You too, Tom."

The phone clicked and the line went dead. Romero hung up the receiver, and opened his email inbox. Sure enough, amongst the requests for vacation time and the complaints about staff leaving their dirty cups in the kitchen, was Fitzpatrick's email with the DNA information from the blood sample. He toyed briefly with the idea of running it through the database, but if he didn't get a match he'd then have to look at CODIS, and that could take hours. First, he had another phone call to make.

Regina had left Mrs. Hawthorn's cell number on a pink sticky note, and he dialled it as the photo of the pale, slender dead woman caught his eye once more. He'd heard it said that a picture painted a thousand words. If that was the case, then the picture of Miss Watson painted a silent film in which there were no subtitles.

"Hello?"

Carmella Hawthorn's voice was quiet, made crackly by static on the line.

"Mrs. Hawthorn, this is Sheriff Romero of White Pine Bay," he replied.

"Oh, Sheriff, thank you for calling back so quickly." There was genuine gratitude in her voice.

"What can I do for you, Mrs. Hawthorn?"

"I've been thinking about what you said, about the men Bev used to talk to me about. For over a day I've been wracking my brains, trying to remember even a small part of our last conversation. This morning, I remembered something she said."

Romero reached for his notepad and a pen. "I'm listening."

"She told me that it was over with Rick. That he wasn't the man she thought he was, and that she never wanted to speak to him again."

Rick. He wrote the word in black ink, and felt the silent film portrayed by the photograph suddenly become a little less silent.

"That's important, isn't it?" the woman asked, sounding as hopeful as a child expecting their dream Christmas present to be under the tree on Christmas Day morning.

"Yes, it is," he replied. "But it would help if you could give me a surname."

"Bev never told me any surnames. I'm sorry, Sheriff, but that's all I could remember. I thought I should tell you right away."

"You've done well," he told her, feeling slight hope and bitter disappointment fighting inside his stomach. He didn't know anyone called Rick, but it could have been Miss Watson's pet name for 'Richard.' Unfortunately, Richard was a very popular name in the town. "If you think of anything else, even if it doesn't seem important, please let me know. At this point, any information can only help us catch the man who killed your sister."

"I will. And thank you, Sheriff."

He hung up, and tapped his pen on his pad, producing a steady rhythm. Who are you? he thought, to the word he'd written on the pad. And what do you know about the death of Beverley Watson?

Once more he reached for his phone, and dialled Deputy Moore's desk.

"Sir?"

"Moore, you bagged Miss Watson's cell phone from the crime scene, didn't you?"

"Yessir. Me and Sondheim went through it with a fine-toothed comb."

"Were any of the texts stored within the memory sent to, or from, 'Rick' or 'Richard'?"

"No sir. She didn't even have a Rick or a Richard in her address book."

Romero closed his eyes as he thought about it logically. If Miss Watson hadn't wanted to speak to 'Rick' ever again, she'd probably deleted his number. But just because the number was deleted from the phone, didn't mean it was gone.

"Let's find out which phone company Miss Watson used and request an itinerary of her most recent incoming and outgoing calls. Both cell phone and land line. Let me know when it comes through."

"Will do," Moore replied.

Romero turned his attention back to his computer. He hated running DNA searches-it was the worst type of waiting game, and more than that, it took most of the police work out of policing. It used to be that a good investigator had to hone his eyes and his mind, and use his wits to solve a crime. Now, all a cop had to do was run a few prints or a DNA sample. Technology was replacing good old fashioned police work, making cops lazy and, in his humble opinion, stupid. He saw the benefits in advances in technology, he truly did, but you couldn't catch Alex Romero relying on high-tech gadgets to solve a crime. Much like people, technology could be deceptively unreliable.

o - o - o - o - o

A cheese and pickle sandwich lay half-eaten on the desk. It had been four hours since Romero's last cup of coffee, and he was beginning to feel jittery. It didn't help that his DNA searches, on both the Oregon DNA database and the national CODIS, had drawn blanks. Whoever the blood belonged to, and Fitzpatrick swore it wasn't Miss Watson, didn't have a record and had never had a DNA sample taken.

It did not bode well for his investigation.

"Sir?" Moore's head appeared in the partially open doorway, followed by an arm, which held a piece of paper. "Got those numbers you wanted."

Romero removed his hands from his temples—it wasn't doing anything for the tension in his head anyway—and looked up at his deputy.

"Anything interesting?"

"On or around the day that she died, Miss Watson made two outgoing calls to local numbers, and received two incoming calls from non-locals. I've already checked the outgoing numbers; one's to the White Pine Bay Motor Garage, and the other's to the florist on Main."

"Is there a 'Rick' working at either of those places?"

Moore shook his head, his line-worn face betraying nothing. "She called the garage to book her car in for a check. Said one of the tyres kept losing air. As for the florist… she ordered a wreath. Apparently she orders one around this time every year, for her mother's grave. Too bad she never got to collect it."

"What about the incoming calls?"

"Well, I thought I'd better leave those for you." Moore handed the paper over. "The first one's a Portland number. Second's a cell, but it's not a US number. The international dialling code's for Norway. I'm thinking it might just be a wrong number."

"Thanks," he said. "Start going through the other numbers, over the past week, and then go back further. I want every number on that list identified. Get Regina to help, if necessary."

Once his deputy had departed, Romero glanced down at the paper in his hands. Moore was probably right. The foreign cell was probably just a wrong number. But it didn't hurt to cover all bases. He dialled the Norwegian number. Six rings he counted. Seven. Eight. Then the line picked up, and a voicemail kicked in. It was a man's voice speaking in Norwegian. Something along the lines of 'leave a message and I'll call you back,' Romero suspected. He hung up without leaving a message, because any message he could have left would only have sounded crazy to somebody in Norway. He could try the number again another time.

The second number, the Portland one, looked more promising. He dialled it, and didn't have to wait long for a response.

"Good afternoon, Cedar Clinic, my name is Aimee, how may I help you today?"

"Hello Aimee, my name's Sheriff Alex Romero, and I'm calling from the White Pine Bay County Sheriff's department. I'm investigating the death of a woman called Beverley Watson, and I can see from her call history that she received a phone call from this number on the day of her death."

"I'm very sorry to hear that," Aimee said, in a chirpy tone. "How may I help with your investigation, Sheriff Romeo?"

"Romero," he corrected her. "And it would help if you could tell me who called Beverley Watson that day, and why."

"Let me just have a look on my system, Sheriff." There was a tap tap tap of keystrokes. "Yes, I can confirm that Beverley Watson did receive a phone call from us last week."

"I already know that," he said, trying to put patience into his voice. God, how he wanted a coffee. "I'm looking at her phone history. What I need to know is who called her, and for what purpose."

"Oh, I'm sorry, but that would be a breach of doctor–patient confidentiality."

"I'm a law enforcement officer, and you are hindering a murder investigation," he accused.

"I'm sorry, but company policy dictates that we don't give out patient information over the phone, as we have no way of verifying your identity. If you like, I can make you an appointment with Doctor Kelsey, so that he can speak with you in person.

"Yes. Today please."

"I'm afraid that Doctor Kelsey's diary is full for the next four days. Would Tuesday of next week be okay?"

"No, it wouldn't. I'm driving to your clinic to see Doctor Kelsey today whether I have an appointment or not."

"Please hold for one moment."

Before Romero could object, Aimee's insipidly cheerful voice disappeared, replaced by Vivaldi's Four Seasons. 'One moment' turned out to be several minutes of what was probably supposed to be relaxing orchestral music. The violin solo merely grated on Romero's nerves, before it was blessedly replaced by Aimee.

"Hello, Sheriff Romero?" the woman said. "Doctor Kelsey will see you at four o'clock."

"How very kind of him. What's the address of your clinic?"

"9–14 Plantation Avenue, Portland. And please remember to bring relevant identification with you. We take our clients' privacy very seriously."

"Clearly."

He grabbed his coat from the stand beside the door and pocketed his notebook and pen. Out in the reception area, Regina and Moore were working diligently on identifying the rest of the numbers on the call list.

"I've got an appointment in Portland," he told them. "I'll probably be back late, so keep working on that list and we'll go over it tomorrow. I'll keep my cell on in case you need me once I'm out of radio range."

"You've found a clue, Sheriff?"

"I hope so, Moore," he replied. "I truly do."

Author's Note: Hello, and thanks for reading the story to date. Initially, this was supposed to be a Romero-centric tale for the sole purpose of wrapping up some loose ends from the first season's human trafficking arc. This story will still do that, but now some other characters (both cannon and ones I've created myself) want to get involved, so I'll be introducing some additional, smaller storylines and I hope you enjoy them. I'll be updating this story according to my whims, rather than a schedule.